Zimbabwe Faces Wider Sanctions Under Bush Plan

Sunday

Jun 29, 2008 at 6:40 AM

After Zimbabwe’s widely denounced presidential runoff, President Bush announced new steps aimed at what he called an “illegitimate government.”

WASHINGTON — President Bush called Saturday for an international arms embargo against Zimbabwe in the wake of last week’s “sham election,” and announced that the United States is drafting new economic sanctions that, for the first time, would take aim at the entire government of President Robert Mugabe.

“The international community has condemned the Mugabe regime’s ruthless campaign of politically motivated violence and intimidation,” Mr. Bush said in a statement from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., adding that he had directed his secretaries of treasury and state to develop sanctions “against this illegitimate government of Zimbabwe and those who support it.”

The announcement came a day after Zimbabweans voted in a presidential runoff that has been widely denounced by Western leaders because of state-sponsored violence and efforts to intimidate voters with threats of beatings if they failed to cast their ballots for Mr. Mugabe, the sole candidate. Dozens of opposition supporters were killed in the weeks leading to the runoff.

The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, dropped out of the race, citing continuing attacks against his supporters, and he later sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy. By taking the rare step of imposing sanctions on the government, the United States would put Zimbabwe in a league with nations like North Korea and Iran — a significant toughening of current policy toward Zimbabwe. The Bush administration has already imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, but they apply only to about 140 members of the governing elite and the businesses they own and control.

“This certainly steps up pretty dramatically the scale of punitive action,” said J. Stephen Morrison, who directs the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here, and worked on Africa issues in the State Department under President Clinton. “It’s long overdue, but having Bush get out there and say some hard things is very important.”

The call for an international arms embargo, which Mr. Bush coupled with a proposed ban on travel by officials of the Mugabe government, is unlikely to be successful. American officials said it would almost certainly run into opposition at the United Nations from South Africa, Russia and China; South Africa’s position has long been that the Zimbabwe election is an internal affair.

The United States’ own sanctions, by contrast, can be carried out unilaterally. American officials and outside experts said they hope the sanctions would put pressure on Zimbabwe’s mining industry, a crucial source of foreign exchange for a government that is very short of it. The sanctions are expected to restrict the government’s ability to do business with American companies, although it is unclear which agencies or state-controlled businesses would be affected.

Africa experts and human rights advocates have not generally been calling for sanctions, in part, Mr. Morrison said, because they have been so focused on trying to tamp down the violence and abuses surrounding the elections. In Washington, Mr. Morrison and a colleague, Mark Bellamy, a former ambassador to Kenya, have been pressing for a diplomatic offensive to create an international consensus that Mr. Mugabe must be ousted.

Zimbabwe’s opposition spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, asked whether his party favored sanctions, would say only that it sought intensified international pressure. It seems likely that the opposition is reluctant to demand sanctions for fear of playing into Mr. Mugabe’s hands. The state media, daily, in story after story, blame the limited sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe on the Zimbabwean elite for having led to the country’s economic ruin.

It is almost certain that Mr. Mugabe will argue that any new sanctions are part of a Western plot to topple him.

It is unclear how much pain that sanctions would actually inflict on the Mugabe government, especially if Zimbabwe continues to get support from countries like South Africa and China.

A senior American official said Saturday that the decision on the United States’ sanctions had been made in the previous 48 hours, and research on how to carry them out had just begun. Although officials, for instance, said sanctions might allow the United States to freeze Zimbabwean assets in American banks, it was unclear if such assets existed.

Arvind Ganesam, director of the business and human rights program at Human Rights Watch, said sanctions on mining could have a significant impact, depending on how they were worded. “As long as the government can draw on mining revenues, it’s got a revenue stream independent of its own population,” he said. “And as long as it has access to those assets it can be as irresponsible as it wants.”

United States officials said the sanctions, which would take at least two weeks to draw up, could still be averted if Mr. Mugabe installs what the United States considers a legitimate government. Mr. Tsvangirai drew 48 percent of the votes in the general election in March, to Mr. Mugabe’s 43 percent, but the runoff was called because neither side had a majority.

“We don’t have a government in Zimbabwe that reflects the will of the people; the pressure has to be ratcheted up,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a deputy White House press secretary and spokesman for Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley.

The results of Friday’s runoff are expected to be announced as early as Sunday.

In making the statement about sanctions, Mr. Bush was defying warnings last week by the African National Congress, South Africa’s governing party, to stay out of Zimbabwe’s business.

The White House had been monitoring the situation all week. On Monday Mr. Bush’s top advisers on Africa briefed him. On Wednesday, he met at the White House with the permanent representatives to the United Nations Security Council, and later called on the African Union to “continue to remind the world that this election is not free and it’s not fair.”

On Friday night, Mr. Hadley briefed Mr. Bush again. By that time, the United States had already begun discussions with its European allies in the Security Council about possible sanctions. American officials circulated a draft resolution Friday that would include an arms embargo and travel and financial restrictions on important members of the government, diplomats said.

The sanctions would extend to individuals who “engaged in or provided support for actions or policies to undermine democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe including having ordered, planned or participated in acts of politically-motivated violence,” the draft reads, according to one diplomat who read aloud from the document but requested anonymity for sharing it.

South Africa has torpedoed most attempts to criticize Zimbabwe. Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations, said last week that the Council should not weigh in before the African heads of state at an African Union summit in Egypt on Monday.

“It’s an African issue,” he said.

Although the proposed embargo seems destined to fail, Mr. Morrison said the push at the United Nations could increase pressure on the international community. “The fact that they’re willing to push it and embarrass people and make them uncomfortable is a good thing,” he said. “It will stigmatize the arms transactions; it will get the Chinese to think twice; it will perhaps get others to think twice.”

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